Self-injury and cutting with Ruta Mazelis, psychiatric abuse survivor and editor for 17+ years of the acclaimed newsletter "The Cutting Edge". Cutting, burning, head banging and other self-harm are discussed from the point of view of people doing them -- as coping mechanisms that need compassion and understanding, not the force and judgment of mainstream psychiatry.   [Read more...]

Transsexual writer and activist Kate Bornstein on her book Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws. Kate overturns the orthodox either-or labels of male / female and straight/gay/bi with her postmodern sexuality of self-definition and fluid identity.

Kate is the author of the highly successful books My Gender Workbook and Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and The Rest of Us, and her new book takes a transgressive and honest approach to what it takes to stay alive in a crazy world.   [Read more...]

Delphine Brody is a psych survivor and advocate with the California Network of Mental Health Clients who has years of experience working for substantial policy change on the local, state, and national level.

Delphine also addresses efforts to stop forced outpatient commitment laws in California in the wake of the recent tragic murder of psychiatrist Dr. Wayne Fenton.   [Read more...]

Oryx Cohen and Will Hall of the Freedom Center discuss how to reduce and go off psychiatric drugs safely. Oryx is diagnosed with bipolar disorder and Will with schizophrenia, and both are medication-free.

They talk about their own experiences as well as general principles and things to keep in mind for anyone working to reduce or go off psychiatric drugs, lessons learned from 5 years of working with the Freedom Center support group and helping people reduce and go off drugs successfully.   [Read more...]

Reason, pseudonym of Valley Free Radio's Antidote Radio host, discusses multiple chemical sensitivity, environmental illness, toxins in our surroundings, food, and bodies, and how this affects our mental health and overall wellbeing. Your diagnosis might be from chemical exposure! Learn about how to address this important issue.   [Read more...]

David Oaks, Director of Mindfreedom International, the leading psychiatric survivor human rights coalition, talks about his 30 years of experience as a movement activist, Mindfreedom's work, and strategies and visions for challenging corporate psychiatric control of mental health care.

David also hosts the weekly Mindfreedom News Hour radio show at http://www.theprn.org   [Read more...]

Barney Plisko, longtime Freedom Center member who has struggled for years with extreme states of consciousness, discusses living with a bipolar diagnosis, dealing with the mental health system, efforts at recovery, and the different ways his condition has disrupted and undermined his life -- as well as offered unexpected opportunities and gifts.   [Read more...]

Leading survivor advocate Darby Penney on the exhibit created from suitcases found in the attic of the old Willard State Hospital asylum in New York, illustrating the forgotten lives of patients there.   [Read more...]

John Judge was active in the 1970s psychiatric survivor movement and is now special assistant to Congressperson Cynthia KcKinney. John discusses MKULTRA and other US psychiatric mind control experiments, which involved torture of thousands of mental patients. Judge also looks at the Jonestown massacre, LSD, and the convergence of Nazism with the roots of biomedical psychiatry.   [Read more...]

Ireland Activist and Poet John McCarthy, Mindfreedom International representative to the United Nations, discusses being "normally mad," recovery, the UN Disability Convention, and challenging system abuses, in dialogue with Will Hall and co-host Oryx Cohen.

John also responds to callers, and reads a very moving poem about the death of a friend in the system. A very popular show.   [Read more...]